That was not done in the case of the Millennium Tower, and Supervisor Aaron Peskin believes it should have been standard procedure all along.

“I was rather shocked find out that actually the records retention policy at the department had not been brought into the dawn of the 21st century, relative to retaining those kinds of records,” Peskin told his colleagues, “It is one of the lessons learned in the Millennium conversation that is ongoing.”

Ron Tom, assistant director of the Department of Building Inspection, said the change will assure no repeat of the records gap exposed by the Millennium project.

“Just in the course of business,” he said, “when something’s out of the ordinary, we would normally expect some records to be retained so we could trace it later on. That didn’t occur (here) … so we’re going to correct that.”

The changes approved by the government oversight committee Thursday must now go before the full board for approval.